Newest Outlander Season 7 Part 2 Update Confirms Fans' Concerns
Apparently, pretty much the entire second half of the novel will be covered in just a few episodes.
Summary
- Many fans were unhappy with how rushed the events of Season 7, Part 1 were.
- Meanwhile, the first two episodes of the season's second half have been officially titled.
- With the titles suggesting that the showrunners once again gave too little screen time to major book events, fans believe the problem is not going away.
Even though we've been in another droughtlander for four months now, and there's no telling how long it will last, a few details are emerging from the far corners that will allow Outlander fans to hold out a little longer and keep the eager anticipation alive with more discussion and speculation.
Some fans have found the narrative of Season 7, while extremely entertaining, to be a bit rushed: although An Echo in the Bone, the novel whose plot is now being adapted to the screen, is not the longest book in the series, 820 pages is by no means a small number! And it looks like the writers intend to cover the rest of the book in the second half of the season, which has fans concerned.
Please note that the following speculations contain spoilers for An Echo in the Bone and the upcoming Season 7, Part 2.
The Titles of the Upcoming Episodes
The Writers Guild of America West directory recently released the titles of the first two episodes of the second half of the season. Episode 9 is called Unfinished Business, and the next one, Episode 10 — Brotherly Love. That's not much to those who only watch the TV adaptation, but fans familiar with the source material know that there are more gripping events and heartbreaking scenes to come.
What Fans Are Saying
The starting point for speculation are the words of Caitriona Balfe herself, spoken at the ATX TV Festival in June.
'I'm going to be a bit vague because it's stuff I can't really, really talk about but I think it's episode 11. There's a scene, there's a sequence of scenes that were really, really challenging. I think my [low point] was trying to figure out how we were going do it and it was really tough,’ the actress said, reflecting on the most intense episode for her.
‘It was also a tough time personally because it was not that long after my dad had passed and it was a very hard thing to sort of get myself into the headspace for and there was a big struggle about how we were going to do it. There was lots of notes going back and forth.'
Many fans have speculated that this is due to the terrible news Claire receives upon her return to America: she is visiting Lord John Grey in Philadelphia to perform surgery on his brother Henry and her grandson Henri-Christian. Then, together with Lord John, Claire learns that the ship on which Jamie followed her to America has sunk, leaving no survivors.
If this is true, Episode 9 will cover the events in Scotland, and Claire will travel to the New World in Episode 10, the title of which refers to both Lord John and his brother, as well as Philadelphia itself, The City of Brotherly Love.
Thus, the second half of the season is intended to fully cover the remaining events of An Echo in the Bone, and will likely even move on to the next novel in the series, Written in My Own Heart's Blood, as Season 8 will be the final one. Many fans are quite concerned that the plot and pacing of future episodes may prove to be too rushed and overloaded with events.
Well, only time will tell. In the meantime, although there have been no official announcements, Sam Heughan hinted on the Graham Norton Radio Show that filming for Season 8 could begin as early as the spring of 2024, which means that Season 7 Part 2 could be released around the same time.
Source: WGA West, Daily Express.